From my mini animal head figure project, I learned that Clay is not as bad as I thought it was. During our first clay piece, I did not enjoy clay at all. I didn't like how easily it changed shape and dried up quickly. During this mini project, I really liked creating the peacock head and its features, even though using two pinch-pots was not my favorite thing to do. The last details I added to the peacock were its antennas. I was really worried about them falling off, and they did. Once it was fired, I painted the peacocks head and antennas that fell off separate. Then I used hot glue to piece the antennas back on.
In the end, I really like how the whole piece turned out. My favorite part is the peacock's eyes. I like how the different levels in the eyes stand out and the color of the inside of the eyes. If I were to do this animal head project again, I would use a different kind of paint, like glaze, instead of acrylics because of how easily the acrylic paint mixes with the other colors. I also would have taken more time painting instead of rushing it.
For the final relief project, I decided to make the relief in cardboard. I chose cardboard because of how well my mini cardboard project had turned out. Of course my final project piece was a lot larger than my mini project, and it was a lot more time consuming. First, I sketched out my design of the Jellyfish on the piece before I began carving into the cardboard. To make this project easier, I carved out the hardest pieces first which were the tentacles (shown in the first image). After carving them out, I had to do the head of the jellyfish and the background. Once I had finished that, the jellyfish appeared to be missing something, so I decided to add design to the heads of the Jellyfish. I also added 3-D tentacles to make it more recognizable as a Jellyfish, which ended up being my favorite thing about this piece. If I were to do this project again, I would focus more on the detail of Jellyfish to create a more realistic image of them.
My first Mini Relief project was made out of a Styrofoam cup. Its a Mickey Mouse head with a crown. This project would fall under the styrofoam medium. Going into this project, I honestly thought it would be the easiest thing to do relief on. Well, the Styrofoam tends to disagree. Trying to get the edges to be smooth instead of crumbly was really hard. At the end of the two days on this project, my ideas had changed from making a 3-D Mickey, to a more flat version. If I did this piece over again, I would take more time to perfect the edges and I would also thoroughly have a plan in my head of my design and how i would portray it before I start it.
Our next assignment was to create a relief piece out of cardboard. Coming from the Styrofoam project, I had very low expectations on how well my piece would turn out but I still tried my best. I chose to create a starfish on the cardboard with lots of seaweed around it. Throughout this project, I became more and more fond of cardboard and learned that cardboard is, so far, my favorite medium to do relief on. I really like pealing the cardboard to make different levels/textures on the image. If i did this project again, I would try to do a more challenging image to relief on. This has been my favorite project so far this quarter.
For our third project, we were to make a clay tile. I decided to do a sunflower image on the clay. In this project, I learned that even slightly touching the clay can dent it and mess up your image. The edges on my tile eventually ended up being uneven and almost squiggly like. If I did this project again, I would be extra careful and pay closer attention to detail. At the end of the project, I felt that the tile turned out okay. Its not the best, but I really thought the way the edge of the pedals stand out looks really neat.